Same, Only Different
by Sofie
Summary: Rent-fic, wherein Roger pouts, Mark sighs, Benny doesn’t have a death-wish, Maureen and Joanne fight, Mimi smiles sadly, Collins is the best boyfriend ever, and Angel is dead. Mark/Roger, but it’s not slash. Chocolate for anyone who can figure that on


AN: I've read some stories based on this idea in the fascinating world of boybandslash, and I loved them, so I decided to writ

AN: I've read some stories based on this idea in the fascinating world of boybandslash, and I loved them, so I decided to write one myself. I hope I'm not offending anyone, I don't think I am. As usual, the characters are not mine. I'm just playing with them, and I promise to put them back where I found them.

Dedicated to: You! For reading it. Thanks. 

**SAME, ONLY DIFFERENT**

Roger woke up. He was feeling a bit strange, but blamed it on the fact that he'd had too much to drink the night before and didn't really think much about it until he rolled over on his stomach. Something was in the way. He froze. Then he closed his eyes tightly, sat up in bed and forced himself to take five deep breaths. He carefully opened one eye and glanced down. Oh God! He had breasts. He had breasts! They weren't supposed to be there! After all, he was a man, and men didn't have breasts. And he was a man… right? As slowly as he could he lifted the cover and peered underneath. Even though he had boxers on he could see that something was missing. Fuck! Something very vital for the male physique was missing. Roger swallowed hard. Then he rose from the bed quietly to avoid waking up Mimi who was sound asleep on the other side. He walked out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and into the tiny bathroom. There, he stared at his face in the mirror. Only, it wasn't his face. The hair was longer, and looked… shinier, or something. The face was smaller, and seemed softer, all the sharp angles were gone. The lips were fuller, and pinker than Roger's lips had ever been. The eyes were still the same though, piercing blue, only with longer eyelashes. 

"What the fuck is happening here?" he exclaimed, and hearing the words made him want to cry. His voice was gone! His wonderful, raspy, sexy voice was gone, and replaced by a voice that could have belonged to Dusty Springfield. Roger had always hated Dusty Springfield. 

"What am I supposed to do now?" Dusty's voice asked. 

"Call Collins," said a little voice that still sounded like Roger from somewhere in the back of his brain. Yeah, Collins was good. Collins knew all sorts of weird stuff. Collins would know what to do. 

Still wearing only his boxers, Roger headed for the phone in the kitchen. He stopped dead in his track when a door suddenly opened. 

"Aaaahhh!" Roger and Mark screamed at the same time.

Roger instantly crossed his arms over his chest, without really realising that he'd done it. 

"Hmm, must be some kind of ancient girl-reflex," he pondered to himself. 

"Ah! Naked woman in the kitchen!" Mark squeaked and covered his eyes with his hands. 

"Mark, it's just me," Roger pleaded. "And I'm not really naked," he added as an after-thought. 

Mark peeked between his fingers at the woman in front of him. "I don't know you," he stated. 

"Thank a lot!" Roger said, beginning to get a bit pissed off at the whole thing. "We've been best friends forever, we've lived together for years, and now you claim you don't know me. Some friend you are!"

Mark removed his hands from his face and stared at the obviously crazy person in his kitchen. "What are you, some kind of psycho?" he asked incredulously. Then he struck what he thought was a threatening pose. "Don't move. I know karate!"

"No you don't, you stupid fucker!" Roger snapped. 

Something in the way the woman called him a stupid fucker struck a familiar chord in Mark's mind. Carefully he stepped closer and looked into her eyes. Her piercing blue eyes. Roger's piercing blue eyes. 

"Roger?"

"Finally!" his best friend said. 

"What happened to you?"

"I don't know! I woke up and I looked like this! A freaking girl!"

"Oh." Mark said. Not a very brilliant answer, but hey, what would you have said? 

***************************************

Two hours later the whole gang was assembled in the kitchen. Mark had decided that the whole Roger-turning-into-a-girl-thing was too much for him to handle alone, so he had called Maureen, Joanne and Collins. He'd even called Benny, because you never knew when a person like Benny could be useful. Mimi wasn't there, though. Roger had woken her up and told her what had happened. He didn't know what reaction he had been hoping for, but it certainly wasn't the one he got. 

"I'll just go back to my own apartment," she had said while putting her clothes on. 

"You could stay," he'd suggested, sitting on the edge of the bed watching her look for her shoes. 

"No, I can't. I just… I don't do that with women, ok?"

"I'm still the same," he'd said. "Only different."

"Yeah." She had smiled sadly. "It's the different part that's the problem."

Mimi had left, and Roger had cursed the extra X-chromosome for making him want to cry all the time. 

And now everyone was staring at him, even Collins who was on the phone with someone - Roger didn't know whom. He was dressed in an old pair of jeans that hung low on his hips, and one of Mark's sweaters that was still too much big for him. 

"You're very pretty," Benny said after a while, when the silence was beginning to get embarrassing. 

"Yeah right," Roger muttered, absent-mindedly twisting a strand of hair around his finger.

"You are!" Maureen agreed, a bit too enthusiastically for Joanne's liking. "You look great!"

Roger didn't answer. Didn't they understand? He didn't want to be pretty. He wasn't supposed to be pretty. He wasn't supposed to be a girl!

Collins hung up the phone. "I've talked to my aunt," he said. "It's only temporary, Roger. You'll turn back."

"Too bad," Maureen mumbled and received a glare from Joanne. 

"How does your aunt know that?" Mark asked. 

"The same thing happened to my cousin a couple of years ago."

The others stared at him.

"So you mean this is a common phenomenon?" Benny said. "People changing sex all of a sudden?"

"Not exactly common, but yeah, it happens. But, as I said, it's not permanent. Chris turned back after a few months."

"Months?" Roger demanded. "A few months? I have to be a fucking girl for a few months?!"

"Hey, take it easy," Collins said.

"It's not that bad," Maureen said. 

"At least you're pretty," Mark offered. 

"I hate you all!" Roger screamed, ran into his bedroom and slammed the door shut. 

"He's gonna make a great girl," Benny reflected calmly. "Seems like he already knows the essentials."

"Just wait until he starts PMS-ing," Joanne said. 

Mark groaned.

***************************************

Roger stayed in his room for three days, snapping and snarling at anyone who tried to talk to him through the locked door. He sneaked out during the night to the small convenience store around the block to buy chocolate chip ice cream, mars bars and other comfort food. Then he sat on his bed, poking the last of the ice cream with his spoon, and realised that not only was he gonna be a girl for the next months, but if he kept this up, he was also going to be a fat girl. Ah, what the hell, he thought and sank his teeth into a mars bar. 

On the fourth day the door finally opened during the daytime and Roger came out, still dressed in his old jeans, and now a t-shirt that said "And your point is…?" Mark, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal in front of him, froze with the spoon halfway to his mouth when he saw his best friend in too large clothes, dirty, tangled hair and a pout on his… her… face. Roger sat down in the chair next to Mark and stared gloomily at him. 

"Hi," Mark said, putting the spoon back in the bowl.

"Hi," Roger replied unenthusiastically. 

"Are you ok?"

Roger raised an eyebrow. 

"Oh. Sorry. Stupid question?"

"Very."

Silence. 

"This sucks!" Roger exclaimed finally, pouting. A very adorable pout, Mark thought, then quickly tried to think of something else. 

"You know what Collins said," he said. "It's only temporary. You'll turn back."

"I guess," Roger sighed. 

"Who knows, it might even be interesting."

Roger sighed again and then he tried to smile. 

"You're right. I have to be a girl for a couple of months. So what? After all, half the population does it all the time. How hard can it be?"

***************************************

Being a girl was a lot harder than Roger had thought. Maureen took him shopping for clothes, and that in itself was pure horror. She picked out a lot of very tight, very short things, claiming that it was a crime to have a body like that and not show it. Much to her dismay, Roger only bought a pair of jeans, a couple of t-shirts and some underwear. 

It was the underwear that proved to be the next cause of trouble for Roger. He had had a lot of experience taking bras off girls, and had always thought he was pretty good at it. Now he discovered that it was a lot harder to put one on himself. After a ten-minute struggle he finally got the damned thing to snap in place. One of the straps was twisted, but there was no way Roger was going through that whole ordeal again so he let it stay that way, even though it looked weird under the grey top that said "Superbitch". 

Then came the ultimate horror - at least that's what Roger thought about shaving his legs. 

"This is pure torture!" he complained to Mark, while dabbing one of the many cuts on his right leg with a paper tissue. "Why do women do this?"

"Because men find it attractive?" Mark offered vaguely. He was trying very hard to read his paper instead of staring at Roger's legs. All that smooth skin that seemed to be begging him to touch it. Had Roger's legs really been that long before? Mark had never really paid any attention to that before. He suddenly got the feeling that he had been wasting a lot of time. 

"Well, men are jerks," Roger muttered. Then he looked critically at his feet. "Do you think I should paint my toe-nails?" he asked suddenly, wiggling his toes in front of Mark's face.

"Uh, yeah, okay I guess," Mark stuttered and quickly rose from his chair. "I think there's still some of Maureen's stuff in the bathroom. Want me to get it for you?"

"Sure," Roger said and admired his legs. "You know, this looks pretty nice."

Mark just nodded and hurried into the bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror.

"Mark, get a grip!" he told his reflection sternly. "It's Roger! Your best friend for seven years. It's not a good idea to be attracted to him."

"But he's a woman now," his reflection objected. "A very pretty woman."

"He won't stay that way," Mark said. "He'll turn back into a man soon, the Roger who leaves his smelly socks everywhere and who always drinks the last of the milk without buying new and who's unbearable when he's drunk and…"

"Yeah, yeah," reflection-Mark interrupted. "But girl-Roger is so cute and has soft hair and long legs and a pretty mouth."

"It's not a good idea," real Mark said. 

"But…"

"Hey Mark!" Roger shouted from the kitchen. "Did you fall into the toilet and drown, or what?"

"See? Not even girl-Roger is very nice," Mark said to the mirror, took the nail polish and left his pouting reflection. It was going to be a long couple of months.

*************************************** 

"I'm dying"! Roger whined. "Mark! Where's my juice?"

"Coming!" Mark called back, and turned to Benny and Collins with a deep sigh. "He's been like this for two entire days. Is he going to be like this every month? Because I don't think I can take much more."

"Ah, the wonderful mysteries of women," Collins said. "This is why I'm gay."

"But why do I have to do this?" Mark complained. "It's not like I'm dating him."

"Just ignore him," Benny advised. "He'll stop whining when he realises that no-one's listening."

Mark stared at Benny."Some friend you are. Is that what you do when Muffy gets her period?"

"Oh, I usually manage to schedule my business-trips around that time of the month. Works out perfectly."

"Mark!" Roger wailed. 

"Maureen was never this much trouble," Mark muttered, took the glass of juice he has poured earlier and went into Roger's bedroom with Benny and Collins in tow. 

Roger was residing in his bed, propped up against both his own and Mark's pillows. A heart-shaped hot water bottle was resting on his stomach and his facial expression was the definition of miserable. Mark handed him the glass of juice and Roger looked at it and grimaced. 

"This is apple," he said and pouted. "I wanted orange."

"We don't have any orange juice," Mark said calmly, resisting the urge to pour the juice over Roger's head. 

"Fine," Roger sighed deeply. "I guess it will have to do."

Mark rolled his eyes and escaped to the kitchen. 

"You know, Allison is never this much of a pain in the ass," Benny said.

Roger glared at him. "I hate you!" he declared. "You have no idea what I'm going through here, and you're not helping!"

Benny raised his hands in surrender."Fine, I'll leave," he said. "Come on, Collins, we're obviously not wanted here."

Collins smiled at Roger and kissed the top of his head. 

"You'll be alright," he said warmly. "And try not to kill Mark, huh? We kind of like him."

Roger pouted.

Mark followed Benny and Collins to the front door. "Come on! You can't just leave me here," he pleaded. 

"We'll be at the Life Café if you need a change of scene," Collins said.

"Guys…"

"Have fun, Marky," Benny laughed before closing the door behind him. 

"Mark!" came Roger's agonised cry from the bedroom. 

Mark opened the door and called to Benny and Collins to wait for him.

*************************************** 

"Mark, I'll be over at Maureen and Joanne's, okay?"

Mark looked up and choked on his herbal tea. He had been drinking a lot of that lately. Apparently it was supposed to have a relaxing effect. Mark didn't think it worked at all. He coughed violently a few seconds and stared at his roommate. 

"You're wearing a skirt," he stuttered when he was able to breath again.

"Uh, yeah," Roger said and suddenly looked nervous. "Is it awful?"

Mark slowly shook his head. The skirt wasn't very short - it reached Roger's knees - but really showed off his legs, and was made of some kind of shiny, black material that Mark didn't recognise. In that skirt, the baby blue tank top, and hair pulled back in a ponytail, Roger was the prettiest woman Mark had ever seen. He swallowed hard. 

"You look great," he said and managed to keep his voice from shaking. 

Roger beamed. "You think so? Thanks!" He bent down and kissed Mark's cheek.

"Um," Mark said when Roger drew back. "Um. Why did you do that?"

"I don't know," Roger said and looked nervous again. "Sorry."

"Oh. Don't worry, it's okay."

"Okay. Well, I must go."

"Yeah."

"Yeah… so, bye."

"Bye."

The door closed. Inside, Mark closed his eyes and cursed himself. Outside, Roger closed his eyes and cursed himself. 

*************************************** 

"Ouch. Ouch. Ouch!" Roger said with a pained expression on his face when Collins opened the door. 

"Hi Roger," Collins said. "Are you okay?"

Roger limped into the hall, kicked his shoes off and sighed blissfully. Collins looked at the shoes and smiled.

"Ah," he said knowingly. "High heels."

"Do you know how much those fuckers hurt?" Roger asked, and was prepared to deliver a speech on exactly how painful the shoes from hell really were, when Collins said:

"Yeah, I do" and made Roger stare at him in awe. 

"You do?"

"Yeah. Angel made me wear them a couple of times, so I would know what she was going through."

"And you did that for her?"

Collins shrugged."Sure."

Roger hugged him hard, almost teary-eyed. "You must be the best boy-friend ever!" he said.

"I try," Collins said and smiled modestly. "Come on, I'll show you what I used to do to make Angel feel better when her feet hurt." Roger hesitated and Collins laughed. "Get your mind out of the gutter! It's nothing like that."

Roger smiled sheepishly, but couldn't help but feel just a tiny bit disappointed. 

Fifteen minutes later he wasn't disappointed anymore. On the contrary, he was seriously considering starting a fan club for Collins, who had turned out to be the best foot rubber in the history of feet. 

"I thought you were supposed to spend the day with Maureen and Joanne," Collins said while his hands were working miracles with Roger's sore ankles. 

"I was. The shoes are Maureen's. She was trying to teach me how to walk in them. But then they started fighting and I thought it was best to run. Only I forgot to change into my own shoes."

"What did they fight about this time?"

"Uh… me, actually." Roger laughed a little. "Joanne thought that Maureen was being a little too interested in the way my hips moved when I walked."

"And was she?"

"Well, this is Maureen we're talking about."

They smiled at each other. 

"And then you came to me," Collins said. "I'm flattered."

"Yeah…" Roger said slowly. "I kind of wanted to talk about something, and you're my only choice really. Mark is out of the question, Maureen is biased, Benny is too straight, and Joanne is too gay. That leaves you."

"I guess it does. What do you want to talk about?"

"Collins, you're gay."

"Yeah," Collins smiled. "Thanks for the revelation, Roger, but I figured that out a long time ago."

"Ha ha. But, I mean, you like guys."

"That is usually the meaning of being gay, yes. Unless you're a woman, then it's the opposite."

Roger stuck his tongue out and then he sighed. "Have you ever noticed that Mark is, you know, cute?"

"Oh…" Collins said slowly. "So that is what this is about."

"Yeah," Roger said and sighed again, putting his head on Collins' shoulder. "Oh, Collins. What should I do?"

"I don't know honey," Collins said and hugged him. "I really don't know."

*************************************** 

"Hi Marky," Benny said cheerfully.

"How did you get in?" Mark asked without looking at him.

"I have a key, remember? I'm the landlord."

"Oh, right. Good for you."

"Yeah. Are you okay, Mark?"

"Me? I'm just fine."

"Hm. What are you doing?"

"Staring at the wall."

"Oh. Well that sure sounds interesting. Mind if I join you?" 

"Nah, go ahead." Mark moved over to the left side of his bed, so that Benny could sit next to him. 

"So, where's Dusty?" Benny asked.

"Who?" Mark finally turned his gaze away from the wall to look at Benny.

"You know, that gorgeous woman that lives here, the one that used to be a man. He totally sounds like Dusty Springfield, haven't you noticed?"

"Oh, that woman. I think he's with Maureen and Joanne."

"Shit. They'll probably try to turn him into a lesbian."

"Well, he already liked girls, you know."

"That was when he was a man, Mark. If he was straight when he was a man, then he's probably straight now he's a woman, ergo, he must like men now."

"I wouldn't know."

"Mark! You're blushing!"

"Am not!"

"Yes you are! What, did you two, like…?"

"No!" Mark exclaimed too quickly. "Of course we didn't." 

"But you want to?"

"Why would I want that?"

"Oh, I don't know, because you two are all alone here all day, and he's the most gorgeous thing I've seen in a very long time."

"No. Well, yes. Oh, God, Benny, why does he have to be so beautiful? I can't stop thinking about him, her, whatever. This is such a mess!"

He sniffled a bit.

"Mark, don't look at me like that," Benny said and shook his head.

"Like what?" 

"That's your I-need-a-hug-face. I don't do hugs, Mark, I'm not good at them."

Mark managed to look even more pathetic. 

"Please?"

"Oh, all right," Benny muttered. "Come here." 

They hugged.

"Benny?" Mark asked. "Does Roger know you're calling him Dusty?"

"Are you kidding? I don't have a death-wish!"

*************************************** 

"Mark? Are you asleep?"

Mark opened his eyes and saw Roger standing in the doorway."No, not really. Come in. Where have you been?"

"I was talking to Collins," Roger said and sat on the bed next to Mark. "About you."

"I talked to Benny about you." 

They were silent for a while, listening to each other breathe. 

"What are we doing?" Mark asked in a little voice.

"I don't know," Roger confessed. "But I do know what I would like to be doing." He reached out and touched Mark's hair. Mark brushed the hand away.

"This is not a good idea."

"Why not?"

"You're my best friend, Roger! And you're gonna turn back soon. What are we supposed to do then?"

"That is then, and this is now. Please, Mark, I need this."

"Roger, it's…" Mark started, but when Roger leaned in and kissed him he forgot why he was ever objecting.

*************************************** 

Roger woke up. He was feeling a bit strange, but didn't really think much about it until he rolled over on his stomach. Something was missing. He froze. Then he rolled over on his back again, and lay like that staring at the ceiling for ten minutes before reaching out and touching Mark's shoulder.

"Mark, wake up."

"Just five more minutes," Mark mumbled. Then he realised what Roger's voice sounded like and opened his eyes. "Oh…" he said. "You're back."

Roger bit his lip."Yeah. I'm back."

Mark rose from the bed and started looking for his clothes. 

"You could stay," Roger suggested, watching Mark pull a t-shirt over his head.

"No, I can't. I just… I'm so sorry, Roger, but I can't, ok?"

"Mark. I'm still the same," Roger pleaded. "Only different."

"Yeah," Mark said and smiled sadly. "It's the different part that's the problem."

Mark left. And even though he couldn't blame it on the extra X-chromosome anymore, Roger cried.

The end.


End file.
